As my regular gentle readers know, my father is Hubert P. Yockey, the nuclear physicist whose scientific papers and books have been seminal in the field of applying information theory and coding theory to molecular biology, the origin of life and evolution. The driving intention of my father’s work in this field has been to rid the field of any proposals that have their foundation in faith, whether religious or secular, so that the only theories that prevail in science are the ones founded on the application of the tools of science: “counting and measuring,” as he quotes Socrates.
(BTW, it is stilted to refer to him as “Hubert P. Yockey,” but his name is a Google key phrase in this subject so I am going to go with sounding stilted so that people searching for his work online can find this post.)
Hubert P. Yockey’s work on the origin of life and evolution sends science and religion to their respective corners: scientists must discard speculations and theories that are proved to be based on faith AND they are wrong to use science to make pronouncements about religious beliefs that are beyond the tools of science. For example, Copernicus and Galileo were right, while the Catholic Church was wrong. Likewise, people of faith are wrong to try to mask their religions as science, that is, factual so that their dogmas must be accepted by all. Hubert P. Yockey includes the secular faith of dialectical materialism, which is the foundation for scientific theories of the origin of life, as one of the faiths that scientists must reject.
Hubert P. Yockey points out that Darwin himself in his book, The Origin of Species, noted that he was not addressing the origin of life because the origin of life is an axiom of biology just as the origin of matter is an axiom of physics and chemistry. Hubert P. Yockey’s most important scientific contribution has been to apply information theory and coding theory to show WHY the origin of life is an axiom of biology and that THAT is what should be taught about the origin of life.
And, this morning, when I was talking over my recent post about him, Hubert P. Yockey said it really IS time to change the scientific nomenclature from “Darwin’s Theory of Evolution” to “Darwin’s Laws of Evolution.” He compared it to quantum theory — which is now also referred to as the laws of quantum mechanics. He also pointed out to me that lay people think that “speculation” and “theory” mean the same thing. They do not. In science, the word “theory” indicates the steps of how a phenomenon occurs. THEN scientists go to work to understand the mechanics of the theory. So, physicists went to work to discover WHY quantum theory was such an apt explanation of phenomena and discovered the LAWS of quantum mechanics.
So, Hubert P. Yockey points out, the discovery of DNA, the genetic code, the genome, the sequence hypothesis, information theory and coding theory, and the tools of gene sequencing have allowed scientists to elucidate WHY Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and the Origin of Species is such an apt explanation for the phenomena of biology and therefore now deserves to be called Darwin’s LAWS of Evolution and the Origin of Species.
Religious people have wrongly appropriated Hubert P. Yockey’s work to re-brand Creationism as Intelligent Design — see Yockey’s amicus brief for the 2005 Dover “Panda” trial. (I have over 20 years of private correspondence to back this assertion, plus my own conversations with my father, at least one of which I have on video, but I am barred by copyright law from publishing anything except my father’s letters.) The intention of these religious people is to appropriate the apparatus of the state — in this case, the educational system — to brand their religious dogma as science in order to force people to accept it. This is wrong in every possible way.
One of the most cunning arguments that religious people make to deceive people into believing that their religious dogma should be accepted in the scientific marketplace of ideas is that Darwin’s theory of evolution is “only a theory” — in order to capitalize on lay people’s incorrect belief that “theory” and “speculation” are synonyms in science — and that therefore their “theory” of Creationism/Intelligent Design is equivalent and should be taught in schools along with Darwin’s theory of evolution because it’s “Darwin’s theory,” not “Darwin’s LAW.”
No. No. No. No. NO!
“Science has sufficiently elucidated the mechanics of Darwin’s theory of evolution that now the scientific nomenclature should be changed to Darwin’s LAWS of evolution and the origin of species,” says Hubert P. Yockey.
Cite this post when you quote him on that.
Comments are closed.